[Press X to Checkpoint]

"Now, you're thinking to yourself--'wait, wasn't this guy's head blown totally off of him? Why is he communicating to us? He's a spirit?'"

The screen wavers. Rudra's voice still resonates.

"After all, Indians respawn instead of spectacting...yes I made a sublime mincraft refrence, yes I still think they are funny, the point is under normal circumstances we rarely become ghost."

"But before this particular level of fuckery proceeds, let's recap."

"Bhairva"

{"Yeah, yeah, I'm waiting for this DVD player to come on--damn…damn"}

"Go on, you're embarrassing me. Get the dust off the cassette first. That's the rule of thumb."

{"Who the hell watches DVD players for flashbacks, anyway? Why can't we just spring for a Blu-Ray? "}

"Wait. You're right! …Where is it again? …Where, where—ah, found it

[Button click.]

{Background noises of a janky game menu loading screen. Cartridge hum. A faint chime.}

[Location: Kala Paani Jail, Port Blair, Andaman Nicobar islands, India]

[Info: Kala Paani Jail, made by Brits during the raj in 1906, to exile Indian political prisoners and freedom fighters. The name "Kala Pani" (black waters) alludes to the dangerous sea journey and the perception that leaving the island meant certain death, as the islands were seen as a remote and isolated place from which no one could return alive, today the jail have been modified to contain Metahumans]

'Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.'

The sound echoed through the pitch-dark chamber, hollow and mocking. No bird nested in these walls—hell, no light had touched them in years. The sparrow's song was nothing more than the mind's desperate trick, a sound conjured to keep madness from settling in.

From cell 19-1-20-1-14, a voice rasped alive, breaking the silence.

"Alright"

The words bounced off the stone like a prayer lost to salt air.

"Aaj hai… August 11, 2025."

("Today is August 11, 2025")

The tone was bitter, but steady.

"Merko yha pade pade sadte hue offically 2 saal ho gaye."

("Two years since I've been rotting in this God-forsaken place.")

"Pata nahi kyu, 2 saal se sunlight na milne ke effect nahi aa rahe,"

("I am curious why two-year-long sunlight absence did not influence the body in any way")

Rudra muttered into the black. His voice sounded foreign even to himself—thin and frayed like a wire about to snap.

He blinked, willing his eyes to create edges in the dark, any form, any hint of a wall to cling to. Nothing. Just that chirp sound his head was creating. "Chirp, chirp, chirp." It scratched on the surface of his skull on theinside. He hit his own temple, again and again, to rattle it loose, to make it quit. But every time the idea of dying came to him, his fist would lock, suspended in the dark.

"Meri pas yehi chhe saal bachay h"

("I still have six years left…")

The words poured from him like a confession he was unable to keep any longer. Six years left, he thought to himself. Six years to what? He did not have a clue. Only what he did not want to do—at least, not once again.

He sat there babbling, his voice echoing back at him in a language only the cell understood, the chirping climbing higher, sharper, until it felt like something was drilling into his ears. That's when the slot in the steel door clanged open, and a wrinkled hand slid an injection through.

"Jaldi lagalo, Beta"

("Use it fast, kid")

The old guard's tone was rough, gruff, but not merciless. Rudra's shaking fingers ripped off the wrapping. He no longer asked what it was. He simply shoved the needle into his shoulder, felt the sting of the liquid diffuse across his skin. Whatever it was, it blunted everything—the bird, the fear, the cracks running through his skull. Temporary lobotomy in a glass. He was fifteen, and this was the sort of quiet that was allowed him.

"Why is there no cure for mental illness yet?" he muttered, half a complaint, half a plea. "Bloody capita—" The word died mid-syllable as the drug kicked in. He went still, eyes unfocused, body upright like a puppet waiting for strings.

"Alright," he breathed, his voice flattening as if narrating someone else's story. "Let's have a mental recap. My name is Rudra—just Rudra. Let's just say I was never destined to live past twenty-one. I don't remember much of my family. They don't remember me at all—perhaps because I wiped their memories before I entered Handpump? I had a mother, a father, a sister, a grandma. I had a grandpa, but he's long gone. I think we had a very… well-off business. Yeah, I remember that. I was sent to the best school in all of Bikaner.

"Where was I? Yeah—so some shit went wrong, and I started killing people I deemed bad guys. This, that. I killed a child… or something. Then I surrendered. I think I got life despite minor laws, but to be honest even if they gave me a measly ten years, at thirteen it would already be a life sentence.

"Geez, am I seriously going to die in this stupid fucking place? I don't wanna die. I wanna live in light. This place stinks. I hate it… but I don't hate it more than myself. After all, I am but a cowardly scum whose actions to save his own skin always come off as heroic deeds to others. The false messiah. I am truly… a larper."

He pressed his forehead against the damp wall, speaking now as if someone were actually listening. "I don't have a last name because… it was for the safety of the future generations of my family. You see, your fate can sometimes transfer to those who come after you. In my case, my sister. There's this whole family crest thing going on…" His voice cracked, but he didn't stop.

"Red… Red… Red…" The voice came again, thin and elastic, neither masculine nor feminine, echoing like it was being thrown down a long, empty corridor. He blinked and the cell blurred, a shape forming—featureless, like someone carved out of smoke.

"Oh, these hallucinations again," Rudra muttered. "Teacher… come back to haunt me or something?" He waved a trembling hand at the figure, as if to swat away a fly. "Go away. I'm not in the mood to do anything. I fear death in such a place, I wanna go outside, but I hate myself so I keep myself locked. I'm already in one confused loop, and the fact that loop is looping without any proton makes it worse…"

He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling he couldn't see, speaking to the dark the way other people pray. "I sometimes talk to the dark by the medium of breathing. It seems to get more and less dark to give answers. But I'm afraid I can't talk with time. Maybe a few more years and my mind gets more fucked up, then maybe I could talk with time and tell him that… I don't wanna die."

Suddenly time slowed. The soundless, shivering halt that had once saved him. Danger sense? His breath hitched—years had passed since he had felt it stir.

In a blink, the haze of the lobotomy drug cracked apart like glass under strain, burned out of his veins by instinct alone.

"Achanak itni thand kese hogyi hai?"(Why is everything suddenly so cold?)

His words fogged in front of him, breath turning visible in the pitch dark. His skin prickled. Then he understood, too late.

"Shi—"

The entire prison was frosting over, cell by cell, brick by brick. Frost crawled across the stone like veins of white fire, crackling as it spread. The metal door at the end of the hall glistened, froze solid, and then—

BOOM.

The gates to his prison shattered outward in a violent blast, shards of steel and ice screaming through the air. Rudra flung himself flat, narrowly dodging as fragments cut into the walls, the floor, everything but him.

Out of the haze that followed, snowy fog seeped into the cellblock. Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed. A shape emerged, tall, unmistakable, carrying with it a presence that felt like winter given a human outline.

"Been a while, hadn't it?" The voice was male. Calm, steady, cutting through the mist.

Rudra's crimson eyes widened as the figure stepped into the dim glow, the fog curling around him like a shroud.

"Red."

Rudra's mouth went dry. His heartbeat stuttered.

"…Agni."

The name left him like a confession. And in that moment he realized—Indians did become ghosts. Because his own was standing right in front of him.